February was a blur. My 90-year old mother tripped and fell in the house at the end of January, jamming her right shoulder and breaking her arm high up near the joint, in a place they couldn't cast it. The good news was the break was clean and set exactly where it should be; the bad news was she wasn't a candidate for surgery so the shoulder is what it is, and the break needed to be immobilized in a sling. She's right handed, which meant she was very limited in what she could do on her own.
My father has never been one to cook anything other than microwave hot dogs, or vacuum or do laundry, so I went home to help out. I was chief cook, laundress, housekeeper, hairdresser, snow removal specialist, chauffeur, and cat referee for a good part of the month. I stuck around long enough to see the sling come off (bone is healing well! hooray!) and take Mom to her first physical therapy appointment (this is going to be the big challenge), then left both of them in the care of my other more local siblings.
This is Sugar, the neighbor's cat who adopted my parents this fall and now rules the house.
She looks very cute and sweet but ambushed poor Archie every chance she got
I arrived back in Chicago exhausted, but in anticipation of being in Michigan for an extended period of time had taken some binding projects with me, so I'm happy to say I returned with some finishes. Can't show the finished products just yet, so here's a peek:
